Frederick W. Robertson on Charles Kingsley

Stopford A. Brooke

[The follow passage appears in Stopford A. Brooke's Life and Letters (1865). George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University,
has scanned it from the text of the 1902 edition (see bibliography) and formatted it in HTML.]

We knew Kingsley's heart, his zeal and
earnestness; and if any of his sentences
were liable to misconstruction, we ought
'patiently to have waited till time and our
own explanations could have supplied what
was wanting. . . . The Son of God
said many things very liable to be misunderstood; and sober people thought them
very dangerous, protested against them,
'Lest the Romans should come and take
away their place and nation." I admit
the rashness of Kingsley's verbiage ; but
rashness is a thing to be loved, not rebuked. My brother, or another officer of
his name, by the last 'Gazette,' was rather
too forward in the action with the Kaffirs,
and fought them with a few men nearly
alone. The commanding officer said it
was rash, for he lost several men, but
praised his gallantry warmly. I wish to
God we had a little soldier's spirit in our
Church! . . .

(No! the Church of England will endure
no chivalry, no dash, no effervescing enthusiasm. She cannot turn it to account, as Rome turns that of Loyolas and Xaviers.
We bear nothing but sober prosaic routine;
and the moment any one with heart and
nerve fit to be the leader of a forlorn hope
appears, we call him a dangerous man, and
exasperate him by cold unsympathising reproofs, till he becomes a Dissenter and a demagogue. . . . Well, I suppose God
will punish us, if in no other way, by
banishing from us all noble spirits, like
Newman and Manning, in one direction,
and men like Kingsley in another, leaving
us to flounder in the mud of commonplace,
unable to rise or sink above the dead level.
Day by day my hopes are sinking. We
dare not say the things we feel. Who
can? Who possibly may, when Records,
Guardians, brother ministers, and lay
hearers are ready at every turn to call out
heterodoxy? It is bondage more than
Roman. And if a man sets his face like a
flint, and desperately runs amuck with his
eyes shut, caring not who is offended, then
he injures his own spirit, becomes, like noble
Carlyle, ferocious, and loses the stream of
living waters in dry desert sand, fructifying nothing, but only festering into swamp shallows . . . Imprudence, half-truths,
rash cries of sympathetic torture. Yes!
But through all these I would hold fast by
a man if I were sure he was sound ill
heart, and meant differently from what he
seemed to mean. ... I hold to heart,
to manhood and nobleness, not correct expression. I try to judge words and actions
by the man, not the man by his words and
actions. . . . What I have said in behalf of Kingsley I have said quite as strongly
from my own pulpit in behalf of Tractarians.
By standing by a man I mean not adopting
his views, if they are not our own, but
tolerating them, and that to an almost unlimited extent — unlimited, at least, in comparison with the limits which the most
liberal I know propose. And if I were
convinced he meant rightly, then by standing by him I should include defending and
explaining. . . .1 am afraid my illustrations are somewhat too military, but I
was rocked and cradled to the roar of artillery, and I began life with a preparation
for, and appointment to, the 3rd Dragoons.
Dis aliter visum.' [197-98]

You may here see how deliberately he
used much of that language which, in some
instances, might be condemned as marking
vehement onesidedness on his part; how
perfectly he was conscious of those complimentary balancing truths which were apparently forgotten by him when he urgently
insisted on others which he looked on as
neglected. This also is further seen when
he writes : —

'Kingsley assumes, perhaps more than I
should, that human selfishness lies at the
bottom of our social evils. I believe that
the contravention of laws which will avenge
themselves, as, for instance, improvidence
and foolish marriages, have had their share
in the production of our present embarrassment ; and that it is one thing to cry woe
to those who have kept back the hire of
the labourers who have reaped down their
fields, and another to denounce it against
those whose fault has been partly ignorance,
partly supineness. But then (he adds) "this
is my opinion, mine only," he having a
right to his. Moreover, he may be more
right than I think. Our foolish sentiment
in promoting marriages, and declaring submission to a brute instinct a Christian duty;
our non-education of the people through
party squabbles; our suffering a vast population to grow up while Church extension
meant only more churches and more salaries ; and while bishops in parliament defending the Church meant only bishops
rising whenever the stipends of the Church
were in danger, and sitting still when corn
laws, or any other great measure affecting
the numbers and food of the people, came
into question. All these things, when I
think of them, make me doubt whether
Kingsley's theory has not a deep, deep,
awful truth at the bottom. Besides, for
3000 years it was the theory and tone of
God's best and truest of His prophets, His
brave ones ; and I shrink from saying, very
authoritatively, that his view is wrong,
though at present I do think it imperfect.

'It is quite true that Kingsley took no
notice of the blessings of constituted order,
&c. But they were no very particular
blessings to the wretches who were rising
by thousands before his tortured imagination. Blessings to you and to me, and to
nobles, and well-to-do tradesmen, and to
all Belgravia; but Kingsley felt he had
something else to do besides lauding our
incomparable constitution — viz. to declare
the truth that there is an emancipation yet
unaccomplished, which will be woe to Belgravia, and to hock-drinking tradesmen,
and to us, the ministers of the Church, if
we do not accomplish.' [198-99]

If, for many reasons besides the sorrow
of even seeming to have needed such words
of expostulation and rebuke, one might be
painfully reluctant to copy out these passages, yet surely no one, revering my friend's character, and desiring to have it fully
represented, would have one of them suppressed. I think he would not, for the
very reason which might at first seem to
require this suppression. For not only are
^-they plainly distinguished from that railing
fanaticism of the mere demagogue with
which, on a superficial glance, they might
be confounded; but they are, in fact,
essentially, nay, antithetically opposed to it.
ThisČis seen in the consciousness that may
be discerned in even the most vehement of
my friend's utterances, of all the force belonging to every view of the question in
debate that was urged by his correspondent.
He could also sympathise with the motives
and feelings of those who were sincerely
resisting him. 'Nevertheless,'he says, in
the same letter from which the above extracts
are taken —

'I repeat I do you warmly justice. If I
did not, I assure you I should not have
taken the trouble to write as warmly and
strongly as I have done ; I should have let
my sad and indignant feelings remain pentup. I have poured them out to you, because
I do think it is worth it, and that there is a
much greater chance of union by so doing.
I am sure of you, as of myself, that you
are not on the side of the Pharisaisms and
Respectabilities in the sense in which I
spoke of them. Respectabilities, in a now
familiar Carlylean sense, is a word implying, at least to me, persons like Balaam, or
persons who are respectable, and nothing
more ; persons who are simply and selfishly
conservative — not Conservatives, because I
honour many of them, but persons who
hate stir and reformation, because these get
down to facts, and disturb cobwebs.' [Ch IX, Brighton 1851, pp. 199; ellipses in original text]